go JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



of the series. These two children were rriade to take what we would 

 now consider rather an oldfashioned interest in popular science, but 

 nevertheless for my part I have never forgotten some of the inform- 

 ation that I derived from them, but what I would particularly call 

 attention to was the method in which these children were taught. 

 Harry used to discuss these subjects with his father while the latter 

 was shaving in the morning. In our days the average father has no 

 time to shave in the morning ; he either shaves at odd times when 

 he thinks he most needs it, or else rushes into a barber shop at a 

 spare moment. Now how much better would it be if we could only 

 arrange our business affairs so as to have these spare moments, not 

 only for our children's instruction, but to save ourselves from a pre- 

 mature exhaustion of our faculties and energies. 



So much for general teaching. And now there are some espec- 

 ial branches that are either neglected or improperly taught, so far as 

 my observations go and judging from my own personal experience. 

 But first of all, to be candid and at the same time better enforce my 

 remarks, I would like to refer to the well taught ones. To begin 

 with then the three R's, reading is certainly better taught than it 

 used to be, and in fact the same may be said of the other members 

 of the group, for before I left school more prominence was being 

 given to the practical rules in arithmetic, and easier methods were 

 being adopted, while writing also was being given more attention to, 

 though I notice that the business colleges are still inclined to teach 

 fancy writing. Shorthand writing was barely known in my time, and 

 though bookkeeping was taught it was not taught any too well then. 

 Spelling, of course, we used to learn, but I thmk the great fact was 

 not sufficiently emphasized, that a good speller must ever try to have 

 the word he would spell before his mind's eye. In these days of 

 phonetic spelling there is, I am afraid, a tendency to lose sight of the 

 derivation of words and encourage the cultivation of the ear more 

 than the eye, but it will be none the less needful to picture the word 

 especially until the new characters that have been advocated are 

 fully adopted. 



Literature in my day was an almost unknown subject, and even 

 now I think that while it forms a prominent feature of our school 

 curricula, it is one of the branches that would be the better taught 

 if the home influences were called on to assist. In my day the 



